What is Middleware-Enhanced Order Management?

Middleware-Enhanced Order Management is a modernized way to automate purchase-to-fulfillment with low-code, API-first connectivity. With the right solution, businesses are automating online ordering, wholesale and other complex sales strategies in one, connected solution. 

What is Order Management?

Order management involves all the people, processes and systems involved in taking an item from ‘ordered’ to ‘fulfilled’. Every step from a customer placing the order to it being delivered has to be meticulously synchronized, especially with modern consumer expectations. With 80% of consumers wanting same-day delivery, optimizing order management has become paramount in staying competitive in an increasingly saturated market. 

Modernizing Order Management 

In recent decades, purchasing power was held by generations that grew up with little to no digitization. Gen X and Boomers were more familiar with the waiting times involved in receiving orders and were less influenced by delivery times.

Now, as Millennials become more significant consumers, companies are having to swiftly change their business models to accommodate generations that live in the now. These buyers’ purchasing habits are influenced by instant gratification - millennials are notoriously busy and aren’t interested in waiting for delivery times, in fact, they’re up to 3 times more likely to pay extra for same-day delivery and prioritize delivery times in their purchasing decisions. 

This demand puts high stress on companies to modernize their order management at the risk of falling behind the competition. Errors, manual processes and outdated systems have become hindrances causing executives to reconsider whether their Order Management Systems can handle their new business strategies.

What is an Order Management System?

Order Management Systems (OMS), provide a digital way to handle all the complex processes involved in fulfilling orders. It acts as a central hub to manage multiple orders across sales channels, websites, brick-and-mortar, POS and more. 

Most established brands use an OMS once they reach a threshold of growth that becomes too complex for individual contributors to manage. What they don’t consider is how the technology will continue to scale with them. As organizations continue to add channels and sales strategies, OMS require additional development accruing technical debt and time investment.

The more ‘traditional’ systems, once an innovative toolkit of digital transformation, have been engineered in such a way that new-age demands like no/low-code integrations are impossible. The only way for brands to gain a competitive advantage, delivering products across multiple channels with speed and accuracy, is to evaluate modernized systems.

Middleware-Enhanced vs Traditional Order Management Systems

While still dominant to this day, traditional order management systems have become a hindrance as modern companies scale their channels. Often coupled into a monolithic system, these OMS’s prioritize being an all-in-one solution which comes with a hefty price tag, especially when tools go unused. If that financial undertaking wasn’t enough, the cost of integration is significant and slow. 

Most companies locked in with a Traditional OMS don’t even know there’s another option. For most, they know of the dominant players but it’s ultimately a game of picking your poison.

The companies and brands that are going to continue to win in their market are catching onto a new solution before the rest of their competitors can figure it out - Middleware-Enhanced Order Management Systems. 

Why Industry Leaders Are Migrating to Middleware-Enhanced OMS

The new-age, Middleware-Enhanced Order Management Systems shaking up the market are embracing a no/low-code revolution, asserting themselves as leaders in a composable-first ecosystem.

Point-to-point and Middleware-Enhanced SaaS

The term middleware-enhanced refers to the way a SaaS company has developed their integration capabilities. Most modern solutions embrace the API-first world with point-to-point integrations where IT teams familiar with systems can build a connection fairly quickly. The issue of complex customization and scaling businesses is the specialty required for multiple channels. For companies just selling on a Shopify store, needing to connect eCommerce with the rest of their fulfilment, point-to-point integrations can be managed. But imagine what happens when the same business wants to expand to selling on Walmart, Amazon and dozens of other channels? The point-to-point integrations for each become expensive, timely and make systems slow.

Often, point-to-point integrations are associated with IpaaS companies over-promising their extensibility to order management. They have an incredible amount of integration offerings across all industries and take months or years to develop. For other industries where real-time connectivity with multiple channels isn’t an integral part of operations, iPaaS is highly impactful. Unfortunately, this point-to-point integration doesn’t solve commerce-first business priorities where quick delivery times are paramount.

Middleware-enhanced systems solve for development time by providing hub-and-spoke integrations. Instead of development teams working on connections between channels, OMS and ERPs, everything is pre-configured. In this model, the hub acts as a mediator between endpoints, synching all systems in real-time so deliveries are quick and inventory is automatically updated. These integrations, instead of months/years, take minutes. Going live on a new channel like Walmart can happen next week - not next year.

Taking Middleware to The Next Level 

Digitally managing your orders and fulfilment comes with a convoluted ecosystem of offerings from Traditional OMS to iPaaS and Middleware-Enhanced OMS. Still, even within the latter, there are variations.

Solutions trying to modernize industries with advancements are forgetting that most companies are still playing catch-up in the era of digital transformation.

As an example, say you’re a pet food manufacturer supplying dog owners with a budget-friendly, high-quality alternative to premium brands. Knowing that your target market, Millennials, like the hybrid brick-and-mortar and digital buying experience, you need to expand your channel strategy. Being a digital early adopter, you’re using a Middleware-Enhanced OMS to connect with API-first channels but it’s time to expand to retail stores that aren’t as advanced as your current trading ecosystem. At best, they use EDI and at worst they use PDFs to order, meaning your once automated order management just became increasingly manual. The hyper-modernized OMS, optimized for digital selling, doesn’t take into account that you need OCR processing of PDF’s or digital scraping of CSV or Excel files, as well as EDI connectivity in addition to the API-first connections they provide. 

The OrderEase Difference 

OrderEase understands that complex businesses require complex solutions. We’ve developed our Middleware-Enhanced Order Management System to automate across all selling strategies including, but not limited to; eCommerce, dropshipping, DTC, wholesale B2B, and brick-and-mortar. Your end-consumer, whether Millennial or not, wants to access your products on multiple platforms and in person. With OrderEase, you can expand your business and prioritize automation without compromising on speed all while controlling your products from one, centralized hub. See the difference OrderEase can make by scheduling a discovery call with one of our OMS specialists where we take the time to learn about your business needs.